The agreement was signed during ceremonies held at The Fabulich Center after a series of presentations and discussions by both ports on recent developments and issues.

“Over the years, our two ports have learned a tremendous amount through meetings and exchanges of this type,” said Connie Bacon, president of the Port of Tacoma Commission. “This MOU sets up the framework for continued cooperation on two key areas that are very important to our respective ports and port communities.”

The Japanese delegation included port officials as well as more than 25 private sector business leaders from Kitakyushu’s warehouse, distribution and logistics sectors.

Following the business meeting and signing ceremony, the group toured Port facilities, a cold storage warehouse and distribution center, and the industrial rain gardens on a Tacoma terminal.

Proposal Due Date: October 31, 2011 at 15:30 EDT (Miami, Florida, USA)

Location: Sealed Technical Qualifications and Price Proposal packages are to be submitted to Port of Miami Crane Management, Inc., (PMCM) at; Port of Miami, 1015 N. America Way, 2nd Floor Front Desk, Miami, FL 33132 USA

For further information please visit http://www.miamidade.gov/portofmiami/

Port of Seattle container volumes were down 11.1% September 2011 vs. 2010 and down 5.9% YTD. Full exports are up 12.1% YTD due to the weak dollar. Full import numbers continue to be down due to softening imports when compared to 2010 volumes.

A switch to Gdansk would also create thousands of new jobs in the Tri-city and reduce the high Co2 emissions associated with trucking and railing containers to Poland from ports like Rotterdam and Hamburg, believes Mr. Wenzel.

“Over the past decade Hamburg and Rotterdam have taken advantage of Poland’s rapid economic growth to develop into this country’s largest container gateways” says Mr. Wenzel. “Now is the time to reduce Poland’s dependence on foreign ports and to look to the east and the south in developing a major hub port here in Gdansk”.

Since it opened three years ago, DCT Gdansk has become the largest container port in Poland, capable of handling the largest vessels in the world with a capacity of 15,500 containers. Sailing time from China and Korea, where a significant share of Poland’s imports of consumer goods are sourced, is just 36 days.

With the port infrastructure in place Boris Wenzel believes DCT Gdansk and other Polish ports should be positioned as the prime gateways not only to Poland but to the CEE and other countries, like Ukraine and Russia, replacing German and other ports as the region’s gateways.

Figures from Ocean Shipping Consultants Ltd show that shipping a container from Shanghai to Warsaw via Gdansk costs some 28 per cent less than through Rotterdam and 20 per cent less than through Hamburg.  

“Today Polish consumers are paying more for imported goods than they should, and Polish exports are less competitive because of higher transport costs to reach foreign hub ports. This is foolish now that Poland has its own hub port in Gdansk”,

Shipping through other ports in the European Union also means that Poland loses duty revenues worth billions of zlotys, which could reduce Poland’s budget deficit, since duty is levied at the port of entry into the EU. Further development of DCT Gdansk could also lead to the creation of 10,000 new jobs in the region by the end of the decade.

But to realize the full potential of Polish container ports, says Mr. Wenzel, the government needs to work with stakeholders and urgently address bureaucratic, financial and infrastructural bottlenecks, which continue to make foreign ports attractive to both importers and exporters in Poland. Priority should go to infrastructure development to efficiently connect Polish ports to the southern and eastern parts of the country, instead of supporting West – East connections that make Poland a corridor for foreign ports to reach further CEE destinations.